Out of Order
by lastincurableromantic
Summary: An Eleven/Rose reunion fic (eventually). A certain blonde woman keeps on popping in and out of Rory's life. Goes off canon in the middle of season 4.
1. Chapter 1--Ancient Rome

**a/n: Written for the following prompt from pinkliliflower:**

**Prompt-Rose is reunited with 11. The doctor introduces her Amy/Rory. Turns out that Rory and Rose know each other very well!**

**Well, I suspect this isn't exactly what she was hoping for, but I hope you all enjoy it.  
**

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**Out of Order**

**Chapter 1-Ancient Rome**

Time twists and turns, that's what her first Doctor had said. You could be born in the twentieth century and die in the nineteenth. And after all the time traveling Rose had done, first with her first Doctor, and then with her second, she was used to the idea that she could end up anywhere, in any place, planet or moon, ship or space station, or any time, forwards five billion years or backwards a million. But despite all the traveling she had done, she had never met a fellow time traveler other than with the Doctor. Or at least she had thought she hadn't. And when she actually did meet one, she didn't realize it.

The first time they met was in ancient Rome. Well, it was the first time for her, not the first time for him as she found out later. Still, it was weird for two people from the twenty-first century to meet in the first, _or was it the second_, but that was time travel for you.

She was hiding in a Roman shrine dedicated to the goddess Fortuna waiting for the Doctor to arrive, well, a slightly earlier Doctor than the one hiding in the TARDIS in an alcove at the back of the shrine. She had to give a phial to the earlier Doctor without him knowing it was her giving it to him so _he_ could go save her and then _she_ could save him and then _he_ could give her the phial so _she_ could give it to his earlier self… Arrg! Although it was not at all unusual for her life these days, actually kind of par for the course when traveling in the TARDIS with the Doctor, it was definitely enough to give her a headache, and she'd be really, really glad when this was all over.

As she crouched behind the statue, she noticed the soldier straight away. Most of the worshippers wore togas or long, flowing dresses but he stood out. He appeared to be a typical Roman soldier, wearing what even Rose recognized as a uniform, although she didn't know enough about the era to recognize what rank he was. He was tall and thin—but not as thin as the Doctor—with sandy brown hair trimmed short and a large nose almost classically Roman in shape. But other than his garb there was something a bit different about him. Perhaps it was the healthy glow to his skin. Roman soldiers weren't paid much, but they ate well and got plenty of exercise so were healthier than the general populous—assuming they hadn't been severely wounded at one time or another—but he seemed healthier still, with no pock marks or scars marring any of his exposed skin.

And his teeth were straight and white. That was a bit unusual in and of itself. She doubted they had much in the way of dental care in ancient Rome. So all in all he seemed… different than the others somehow, beyond the uniform.

He was carrying a bouquet of flowers, evidently a gift for the goddess, but he hung back until the bulk of worshippers had left and the room was mostly empty. He then stepped forward, laid it at the feet of the statue and then backed off to a respectful distance.

He stood there for a moment, head bowed and hands clasped together which was very unlike how the other worshippers had stood. They had been respectful, yes, but none of them had bowed their heads that way. If it wasn't for the uniform, he would have looked like he was praying in a church.

She peeked around the statue again, trying to see the entrance to the shrine. The Doctor would be there any second now, and she was really hoping that the Roman soldier wouldn't prevent her from doing what she had to do.

The Doctor hadn't mentioned anyone being in the shrine when he got there. And that meant the soldier had to leave.

His voice suddenly broke through her thoughts.

"O Goddess Fortuna," he said in a sing-song sort of way, "I have traveled far over land and sea to beseech you. Please aid me in my mission. The road will be long and hard, but I must not fail at my task to protect the fair Amelia."

He lowered his head again and fell silent.

Rose stared at him and gritted her teeth. Damn, he still wasn't leaving.

And then, without raising his head, he peeked up at the statue.

"Please?" he asked.

She blinked. He sounded so earnest, so heartbroken. But it was the please that got to her.

He continued to stand there as if awaiting a response. But of course a statue couldn't respond.

"Pretty please?"

Rose's stomach clenched nervously. Would his being there prevent the earlier Doctor from even approaching the statue? She couldn't risk it. She had to hurry him along.

"Yeah," she said.

He jumped and looked around wildly, looking almost terrified, and she wondered if she should have said anything after all. Then he turned back and stared wide-eyed at the statue's face. Then his eyes narrowed.

"Yeah?" he asked. "Yeah, what?"

"Yeah, I'll help," she said.

The soldier cocked his head. "You don't sound much like a goddess," he said.

Oops. Gotta fix this somehow and get him outa here before the Doctor comes back.

"But I am," she told him, trying to sound as goddess-like as possible. "I, the goddess Fortuna, will aid you in your task. But only if you return to it straight away."

"Really?" His voice shot up half an octave.

"Yes, really," she told him, an impatient tone creeping into her voice.

"Oh. Oh, good," he said, sounding at once pleased and still somewhat disbelieving. "Thanks."

"You're welcome." She paused, but he didn't move. "But I can't aid you in your task unless you return to it," she said pointedly.

"Oh, yeah, right," he said. "I'll just go, shall I?" He gestured towards the entrance of the shrine.

Rose spotted the Doctor in the doorway. He was here! And that meant this Roman soldier had to leave right now.

"Go on!" she hissed. "Get outa here and back to your task or mission or whatever the hell it is. Or I won't help you after all!"

His jaw dropped. Then with a tiny squeak he turned and fled, stumbling a bit and nearly knocking over the Doctor in his rush to leave. And then she didn't see him again for a few more weeks. Or millennia, depending how you wanted to look at it.


	2. Chapter 2--Ynys Du

**a/n: Major spoilers for the novel The Nightmare of Black Island by Mike Tucker.**

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**Chapter 2—Ynys Du**

The first time he met her, she didn't realize it.

Well, Rory had to admit, met wasn't exactly the right word, since they had never spoken that time and she never even really looked at him.

But he was definitely aware of her.

He was twelve, staying for a few months with his aunt and uncle in a little town called Ynys Du on the coast of Wales. His father had taken a temporary construction job up in Glasgow and his mother had gone with him, but they decided to leave Rory behind, shipping him off to live with his father's sister and her husband.

Rory's aunt and uncle had no kids of their own, so they really didn't know what to do with him. How _does_ one entertain a twelve year old boy anyway, they had wondered aloud after his parents had left. They eventually decided to let him do whatever he wanted, as long as he was in before dark. Even a little town like theirs could be dangerous after dark, they told him. Very, very dangerous. So it was absolutely essential he was in the house before dark.

Rory had rolled his eyes at that. He was _twelve_, for goodness sake. It's not like he was a little kid. Besides, how dangerous could it be? The whole place wasn't even as big as Leadworth, and Leadworth was absolutely dead after 7:00.

Actually, Leadworth was dead all the time, but still. And Ynys Du seemed to be exactly the same.

When he had first arrived Ynys Du had seemed okay, albeit a bit boring. The town was pretty and it wasn't Leadworth, which in and of itself was in its favor. But by the end of the first week Rory hated it. He missed his friends—alright, he missed Amy—and he hadn't really met anyone here yet. And if you didn't fish, there really wasn't anything to do. There didn't appear to be a youth center or arcade or anything, and you weren't even allowed in the woods. And to top it off, he wasn't sleeping well. Didn't matter much, he supposed. He liked staying up late, particularly because his parents never let him do it at home, so he spent the long nights writing letters to Amy, telling her how utterly bored he was and how much he missed her.

Letters he never intended to send, of course.

Eventually he found some other kids to hang around with. He was an outsider, and shy, and he had a slight tendency to stutter when flustered or nervous, so he considered himself lucky that they allowed him to be one of the kids that made up the outer fringe. They hung out on street corners or in vacant lots. Occasionally they'd even hang out in a hidden spot just on the inside of the edge of the woods, telling stories about other children who had wandered into the forest and never come out. One of the bigger kids, who was a bit of a bully, dared the others to go in. But only the very, very brave ventured more than a few yards further into the thicket.

A couple of weeks later, after listening to the stories again and again and hearing whispers between his aunt and uncle that he didn't quite catch, he asked a little girl, a girl named Ali a couple years younger than he was, what was going on.

"There's monsters in the forest," she replied.

Rory scoffed. "There's no such thing as monsters."

"Is too!" she insisted. "Everybody knows it." She stared at him for a moment. "Don't you hear the growling at night?"

"There's no such thing as monsters," he said again, wondering why he had bothered to ask a child who appeared half his age. Probably because she was the only one in the entire town who would actually talk to him, he thought. On the other hand, when he stayed up particularly late, he had been hearing some strange noises coming from outside, noises that could sort of be described as growling.

"And not only that, the grownups were talking about someone who _died_," she said dramatically. "And there are strangers here. They're staying with us. So I know it's all true."

Later that same day was the first time he saw _her_. She was tall—well, taller than he was since he hadn't had his growth spurt yet—and she was absolutely gorgeous with shoulder-length blond hair and a wide smile.

They had all been running around in the streets and practically barreled into her, well, them really. Because she was with a man. A tall, very skinny man in a brown suit and overcoat.

The man, who said he was some sort of a doctor, began to question the kids in his group about all sorts of things: about the town, about the monsters, about the old rectory on the edge of town that no one ever went near. He seemed nice enough, but no one really wanted to talk to him. He was a grown up after all. So when the others began to run off, Rory ran too, but not without a backwards glance at the beautiful blonde girl.

But then later she showed up at their fort on the edge of the woods, wearing a parka against the nippy weather.

His heart pounded when he saw her at the entrance. He didn't know her name, but he was in love. Maybe not as much as he was with Amy, but it was definitely love. And so he did the only thing a twelve year old boy with a stutter could do. When she turned to face him, he hid behind some bigger kids.

She began to ask questions, about their gang, about their hideout, about the rectory. This time the kids actually answered. Maybe it was because she wasn't all that old, not as old as your parents or teachers, or maybe it was because she just had that way about her, like you could open up to her and tell her all your secrets and dreams and she wouldn't laugh.

After a hurried vote, they unanimously decided she could be a member of their group.

"But not your friend," Ali told her. "He's too old."

The older girl laughed. "You're more right than you know!"

All of a sudden he realized the man she had been with, that doctor, was her bloke. Even though he knew it was silly to feel that way, he had to fight off a wave of jealousy. How could he compete with _him_?

And Ali was right. That doctor was old, way older than the blonde girl was. The man might even have been _thirty_. In any case in Rory's opinion he was much too old for her. He refused to think about the fact that at twelve he was much too young for her.

But then his dream girl left with Ali, headed towards an old tunnel that led to the rectory.

Rory trailed behind, trying to watch the blonde girl without her seeing him. But then they went into the tunnel. He followed for a short time, but then he lost them in the darkness. Eventually he was forced to turn around.

The next day he hung out with the other kids. He was disappointed when Ali never showed because she was the only one of the other kids whom he really considered a friend.

It wasn't too much after that that the rectory exploded.

As the fire brigade fought the resulting fire, Rory wandered the crowds that had turned out to watch. He told himself he was looking for Ali, but he was really trying to spot blonde hair and a parka, or dark hair and a long brown overcoat. To his disappointment, he never saw them.

The next day Ali showed up at his aunt's house.

"Where were you yesterday?" Rory asked. "Did you know that the rectory burned down?"

She told him that the girl and her boyfriend had figured out what was going on, had done something to get rid of the monsters and make the nightmares go away, and she bragged that she had helped. The idea that Ali had helped seemed ridiculous to him, but for some reason he could believe that the man and the girl had solved the problems in Ynys Du.

And then Rory had gone home to Leadworth, and he knew he'd never see his dream girl again. And he didn't.

Well, not for a few years at any rate.


	3. Chapter 3--Bromley

**a/n: Minor spoilers for the novel Only Human by Gareth Roberts.**

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**Chapter Three—Bromley**

When Rory left Ynys Du to return to Leadworth, he swore to himself that he'd never forget her—and that he would never, ever, _ever_ mention her to Amy—but by the next time he saw her, well, he hadn't exactly forgotten about her, but he had forgotten what she looked like and so he didn't recognize her. Not at first, at any rate.

Halfway through a twelve week internship at Southam Hospital in Bromley, he was sitting in the cafeteria taking a mid-morning break, talking to Amy on his mobile phone and trying to eat a ham and cheese sandwich and crisps to make up for the fact that he hadn't had breakfast. Since they were both busy, him with the end of his training and her with her new job as a kiss-o-gram, they hadn't seen each other since he had left Leadworth.

"No, I can't come back this weekend, Amy," he said, his mouth half full of sandwich. "Of course I want to. I just can't. I have to work. Yes, I know that the weekend is your busiest time at work too, but my boss doesn't care about your job or my job or our love life."

He sighed as he listened to her response.

"Yeah, I miss you too," he said. "Love you. Talk to you soon."

He shoved his mobile in his pocket and glanced at his watch. Damn, only about five more minutes till he was supposed to be back on shift. He picked up his sandwich and took a huge bite. Then his mobile chimed.

First putting the sandwich back down on his tray, he then pulled his mobile back out of his pocket. Huh. A text from Amy. Puzzled since he had just spoken to her, he checked the message.

_Wanna see what you're missing?_

Before he could respond the mobile chimed again. Still chewing, with one hand he picked up his coffee while the other opened the photo she had sent.

He began to choke and spilled his almost full mug of coffee down his front when he saw how Amy was dressed.

Or undressed actually.

He hurriedly swallowed, washing it down with the dregs remaining in his cup, and then swore under his breath when he looked down at himself. He was covered in hot coffee from his neck to his crotch. Not only was it burning him, he couldn't go back on shift like this.

He left his tray on the table and rushed to the men's locker room. Once there he stripped down to his pants and put on a spare pair of scrubs he had grabbed from a storage cupboard on the way.

Once back on the floor, the head nurse glared at him. She pursed her lips and looked askance at his attire.

"You were supposed to be back ten minutes ago," she scolded. "And are you wearing _doctor's_ scrubs?"

He glanced down at himself and winced. He hadn't noticed what type of scrubs he had grabbed when he had picked them up. "Oh, sorry," he apologized. "I, uh, spilled coffee on myself and had to change. This was all I could find."

She let out a huff of disapproval.

"You're scheduled up on the seventh floor, in Isolation. Since you're_ late_," and until then Rory hadn't realized how much contempt could be put into a single word, "Weronica'll probably already have started." She named a nurse that Rory had only met once, and briefly at that. When he didn't move immediately, waiting for her to finish giving him instructions, she glared at him again and spoke sharply. "Go on. Get a move on."

He turned and fled to the lifts.

There was chaos on the floor when he got there. "What's going on?" he asked of a nurse who was trying to enter the lift as he got off.

"They're evacuating the floor, doctor," she replied. "Someone said there's a case of Ebola!"

He glanced down the corridor worriedly. "I'm not… I'm not a doctor," he said absently as he turned back to her, but she was already gone.

He glanced back down the corridor. There were doctors gathering at the far end of the hall. Things seemed to be well in hand, and he was certain they didn't need a nursing student getting in the way.

"Nuts to this," he said to himself and headed back downstairs.

Reception was already chaotic. There was a commotion outside, and Rory joined the staff and visitors who rushed to the wide, glass entrance flanking the main doors to see what was going on. To his shock, not only was bright yellow incident tape being strung around the building, but a series of military vans were pulling up and he could hear a helicopter circling overhead.

Armed soldiers exited the vans and began to run into the building. The first of them pointed at Rory.

"You there, where's the patient?"

"Up in Isolation," he said, looking nervously at the large, high powered rifle in the man's hands.

"Show me," the soldier ordered.

"You can't go in there," Rory told him.

"You just do your job and let us do ours, doctor," the soldier replied.

"I'm not…" he began.

"Show me!" the soldier interrupted in a voice that broached no argument.

Rory inwardly shrugged and began to lead the way.

There was a saying that the only thing that spread faster than dysentery in a hospital was a rumor, and Rory quickly discovered that was certainly the case here. Within minutes, the entire hospital, minus those whom had been in direct contact with the patient, was being evacuated. Of course, the armed soldiers might have had something to do with it as well.

The lifts were all busy, so Rory headed to the stairwell. It was packed with wave upon wave of people coming down from the upper floors. He looked helplessly over his shoulder at the soldiers following him. The lead soldier nodded, and Rory rolled his eyes. With a heavy sigh, he pushed his way through the crowd and led the way up the fourteen flights of stairs to the seventh floor.

Once he had passed through the fire doors leading to the Isolation ward, Rory stopped, wheezing and with his hands on his hips. His lungs burned from the exertion.

"I really need to get in shape," he said under his breath, and the soldier next to him gave him a disgusted look.

Voices were coming from the ward at the other end of the corridor he had just left minutes earlier. At the sounds of the soldiers behind him entering the hall, a man stuck his head out of the door. Rory recognized him as a doctor from the Orthopedics department.

"This way, doctor," he called.

"I'm not…" Rory called back and then shook his head. "Oh, forget it."

As he entered the room, the first thing that struck him was the smell. It was odd; it wasn't the clinical odor of disinfectants, nor was it the pungent odor of an unwashed, sick patient.

No, it almost smelled… outdoorsy.

He spotted Weronica standing next to the patient's bed. The patient looked to be sedated, and Rory couldn't resist approaching to take a peek at the person who was the source of all the uproar. He looked as unusual as he smelled. With a wide, almost flat nose and an overly-heavy brow, he almost didn't look… human.

But that was ridiculous.

It might explain all the soldiers, though.

Behind him, the door to the Isolation ward burst open, and a tall man strode in. With his shorn hair, he almost looked like he was part of the military contingent, but his jeans and leather jacket set him apart from the soldiers. He was accompanied by a very pretty nurse with long blonde hair, a nurse who looked vaguely familiar to him. For a moment Rory thought he might have seen her around the hospital, but that didn't seem right somehow. Plus her nurse's uniform was different than the ones worn here.

"I'm Doctor… Table," the man said by way of introduction and immediately pronounced that the patient had a case of acromegaly and that the patient needed to be turned over to him.

Rory was instantly jealous. Doctor Table had such a commanding presence. What he wouldn't give to have the ability to simply walk into a room and have everyone immediately defer to his authority. But that would never happen, he told himself. Not in this lifetime at any rate.

"Nurse Tyler—" Doctor Table began, addressing the blonde nurse with him. He then turned to Weronica. "And you, please put him on a trolley."

They immediately obeyed. As they began to roll the patient out of the room, Doctor Table and the doctor from Orthopedics began discussing his diagnosis, but Rory hardly paid attention. Instead he was distracted by Nurse Tyler.

He was certain he had seen her somewhere before. If only he could remember where.

It was only when he was back in his flat that evening that he realized she reminded him of the girl from Ynys Du.

"But that was seven years ago," he said to himself. The nurse was much too young to be the same person. It was impossible.

Wasn't it?


	4. Chapter 4--Venice

**Chapter Four—Venice **

In the dimension cannon room in the parallel Torchwood of Pete's World, Rose readied herself for yet another trip across the Void. In an effort to prevent disruptions to the timeline, she wore what she always wore, what had essentially become her uniform: pink, long sleeved tee shirt, black jeans and a blue leather jacket with her hair pulled back out of her face and held in place with a hair slide.

"Are we good to go?" she asked.

Mickey sat on the opposite side of the room, doing last minute calculations on the computer. Just outside the room behind a glass window stood Jackie next to Rose's parallel dad Pete. Her mum insisted on being there every time Rose did a jump, knowing that each time she used the dimension cannon it might be the last time she ever saw her daughter.

"Not yet," Mickey answered. His voice held more than a tinge of frustration. "I don't get it. I can't get a fix."

"Oh, God, not again," she said. "Did you try to focus in on Donna Noble?"

"Yes!" he snapped.

"What about where Donna intersects with the TARDIS?"

"Yes, I tried to get a fix where Donna intersects with the TARDIS!" he exploded. "What do you think I've been trying to do for the last half an hour! I'm not a complete idiot!"

His outburst shocked Rose into silence, a silence that stretched into several long, uncomfortable moments.

"I'm sorry, Micks," Rose said eventually.

"No, I'm sorry, babe," he answered. "I know how anxious you are. 'S just, it's like she's disappeared or somethin'."

"But she must be there somewhere," Rose protested. "All the timelines were converging on her."

"Not anymore," Mickey told her. "Something must have happened."

He paused for a moment and turned away from her. "Rose, I don't think she's travelin' with him anymore," he said quietly.

"You've got to be joking," she said with a nervous laugh. He didn't answer. "You're joking, right? You have to be joking."

He turned back to her and shook his head. "No, I'm not."

As what he had said sank in, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath, fighting off a wave of panic. All of their computer programs were geared to track the Doctor through Donna. If she was no longer with him, they might have to start their search from square one. And with the stars going out, they just didn't have that kind of time.

Once she had composed herself somewhat, she opened her eyes again. "What do we do now?" she asked.

Mickey wasn't fooled by her outward calm. "Well, I can try to focus on the TARDIS alone. 'S not as accurate, though. We might veer off his proper timeline. We could even miss him altogether."

She tightened her jaw. "We've gotta risk it," she said.

"There's more," he said. "While I've been lookin' for Donna, I found somethin' else. Some sort of distortions have cropped up, almost like a second set of cracks. But these are different somehow."

"What do you mean, different? Different how?"

"I don't know. They don't seem to be cracks from one dimension to another. They're more like, mini black holes or something. One way trips into the Void with no exit on the other side. If you hit one of those… well, I don't know if I'd be able to pull you out."

She swore fluently, using curses in a half a dozen languages, some of them not human.

"Still wanna risk it?" he asked.

"Yes," she said firmly. At the look of concern on his face, she continued. "I have to, Mick. You know that. It's not just about me. It's about everything, everywhere, in every universe. He's our only hope. I've got to warn him."

He nodded. "Then I'll work on the calculations and get you goin'." He turned back to the computer and Rose began to head out of the room to join her parents. "Oh, and Rose," he called as she was walking out the door. She turned back and he met her eyes. "I'll find him for you. I promise."

Five minutes later, Mickey called her back. "Okay, I've got a fix on the TARDIS," he told her as she walked into the room. "It's not a strong one, cos I had to make adjustments to avoid one of the distortions, so I don't know how close you're gonna be to it. You're gonna have to find him quick, too, because if the distortion gets worse, I'll have to pull you out of there. Otherwise you could get stuck wherever you land with no way back."

She nodded. "Thanks, Mickey," she said.

"Good luck, Rose," he told her, and she entered the glass booth that held the dimension cannon.

The cannon fired up with a whir, and Rose felt the sensation of pins and needles that she always felt when traveling across the Void. Less than a second later she found herself precariously perched on the stone railing of a bridge. She looked behind her a bit too quickly and almost lost her balance.

"Whoa," she said and immediately held out her arms to steady herself. Gymnastics to the rescue once again, she thought with a bit of a smile.

Rose jumped off the railing and looked around. The bridge she was on spanned a canal lined with buildings hundreds of years old. And in the canal floated—

"Gondolas," she said under her breath. She wrinkled her nose at the stench of human waste rising up from the water. "Well, this certainly isn't London."

She had only seen pictures of Venice, but that was certainly where she was. The only question was when.

Whenever she was, it was still fairly early in the day. The canal, the adjacent walkway between it and the buildings, the narrow road leading away from the water, all were deserted. That surprised her. In a major city like Venice, she would have imagined that someone would have been around. On the other hand, that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. If she wasn't in the twenty-first century, her jeans and leather jacket would look suspicious to anyone who saw her. Not to mention the fact that her Italian was spotty to say the least. One of the things she missed most, after the Doctor and the TARDIS herself, was the TARDIS translating for her.

She pulled a small device out of her pocket and began to scan for alien tech as she crossed the bridge and began to make her way along the walkway. She couldn't get a clear reading, so she began to scan for alien life forms in the hope of finding a certain one, one tall, thin alien with two hearts and great hair.

Her brow furrowed when she saw the results of the scan. According to it, she was surrounded by aliens and most of them seemed to be concentrated _in_ the canal.

"Huh," she said and slammed the heel of her hand against the device. When the readings didn't change, she began to smile. If there were aliens here, he'd show up eventually.

She had wandered the city for over an hour, scanning for the TARDIS and the Doctor, when people began to emerge from the buildings. Damn. They were dressed in what looked like period costumes from hundreds of years before her time.

Hoping she hadn't been spotted, she ducked into a doorway to hide. She was either in the wrong time or the wrong universe. If she was in the wrong universe, there was nothing to do except wait for Mickey to pull her back. But it wouldn't matter if she wasn't in her time if the Doctor were here.

She looked back at her scanner and examined the readings for time vortex traces. Ha, she thought triumphantly, there were some. They appeared slightly off, slightly shifted from what she had been expecting, but the display definitely showed artron, huon, and half a dozen other energies that were associated with time travel. And they appeared to be strongest in the alley next to her.

Only a dozen yards away.

She peeked out of the doorway. There were few women gathered around a street vendor selling bread and several others near one selling vegetables, but otherwise the road was empty. Empty enough at any rate that she probably could sneak out without being noticed.

Once she saw their backs were turned, she rushed out and ran in the direction of the time traces, quickly rounding a corner into the narrow alley. And ran straight into someone.

"Oh, sorry," a male voice said.

Rose backed up and blinked. In front of her stood a man about her age incongruously wearing jeans and a down vest. Underneath the vest he had on a long sleeved orange tee shirt imprinted with a picture of himself and a young woman that was in the shape of a heart.

When he saw her his jaw dropped.

"You're…" he began.

"You speak English," she said at the same time. She scanned him, and her heart raced with excitement. There were time traces all over him.

"Yeah." He nodded dumbly. "You're…"

"You're a time traveler," she said, interrupting him.

"Uh, yeah, I guess I am now," he answered, sounding surprised as he said it. He chuckled. "How could you tell?"

She grinned. "Well, not only are you radiating time vortex energy," she told him, "but that vest is made of material that probably won't be made for hundreds of years. Plus I don't think Venetians of this time period knew how to put photos on shirts like that."

He glanced down at himself. "Oh yeah." He grinned ruefully. "I'm guessing they probably didn't have jackets like yours either." He gestured towards the device in her hand. "Or temporal scanners."

She laughed. "I suppose not." She shoved it back in her pocket. "What's your name?"

He looked surprised at the question. "Rory," he told her. "Rory Williams."

"Well, Rory Williams," she said, "I'm looking for someone, and I'm really, really hoping you know him. He's called the Doctor." She paused, and when he didn't answer right away she continued. "He's a tall, thin man with dark brown hair and eyes and always wears a pinstriped suit."

Rory opened his mouth as if to respond and then abruptly shut it without saying anything.

"Rory?" an unfamiliar man's voice called, and the sound echoed through the alley. Rose looked around but couldn't see its source.

A woman's voice followed.

"Oi, stupid face. Where'd you go?"

"I'm over here," Rory called back. "I'll be there in a second." He turned back to Rose and met her eyes and when he spoke, it was slowly and deliberately. "I'm sorry. I don't know anyone who looks like that."

Rose stared at him, feeling an odd combination of disappointment and disbelief, and Rory stared back, looking like he was trying to communicate something to her without actually saying it. And then she realized the truth.

"You do know him," she said. "You know him, but not _that_ him."

"Rory, I told you not to wander off!" the unseen man yelled. "Rule one, don't wander off!"

"That's him, isn't it?" she asked. "That's the Doctor?"

As soon as the words were out of her mouth she felt the prickling in her skin of the beginning of her translation back across the Void.

"No, Mickey, not yet!" she yelled and then found herself back in Pete's World. Fighting off tears, she slammed her hand into the wall of the glass booth. "Damn it!"


	5. Chapter 5--Leadworth, 2008

**Chapter Five—Leadworth, 2008**

"Damn it, Mickey!" Rose shouted as she got out of the dimension cannon booth. "You pulled me out too soon!"

"You saw him?" Mickey asked, astonished.

She stomped across the room to where he was sitting, at the controls to the cannon. "No, but I heard him." She took long, deep breaths trying to calm down. "Mick, he was right there. _Right there_, just around the corner from where I was."

"Oh God, Rose, I am so sorry." Mickey looked stricken. "I had no idea. The distortion near you was getting worse, and I didn't want to risk you getting trapped there."

Rose sighed in resignation and then nodded. No matter how upset she was, she knew it wasn't really Mickey's fault she had missed the Doctor. She had come close to finding him more times than she wanted to think about, sometimes missing him only by minutes, but this was the closest she had ever come.

"I know. I don't blame you." She sank down on the edge of the desk next to him. "Mickey, I've gotta tell you something. He wasn't…" Her voice trailed off. At his puzzled look, she forced herself to continue. "Mick, it was him, but it wasn't _him_."

"He regenerated again?"

"I don't know," she admitted. "I landed in Venice, somewhere in the past. It could have been a previous him. Him before I met him."

"Rose, I hate to say it, but it's probably a good thing you didn't see him," he told her. "If it was him before you met him, it could have created all kinds of paradoxes."

"Don't you think I know that?" she snapped. Her voice broke as her face screwed up with emotion. "It's just… I miss him so much, and he was _so close_."

He jumped up and wrapped his arms around her. She buried her face in his shoulder and, despite her best efforts not to, she began to cry. "I said I'd find him for you, and I will," he whispered into her hair. "I promise." He tightened his grip on her. "If you want, we can try again, just as soon as the cannon recharges and we get a fix on him."

Rose pulled away from him and wiped her face with her hands. "Yeah, I want to."

He met her eyes. "You okay?"

"Yeah," she told him. "'M fine."

He gave her a small grin, one which she returned. "Then let's do this."

~oOo~

Despite having missed the Doctor in Venice, overall Rose and Mickey were encouraged that they had come so close. They pressed harder. Over the next several days Rose made more than twenty trips, some that lasted mere moments, just long enough for her to realize that she wasn't in the right universe. And after each trip, she, Mickey, Jake, Pete and the others involved with the dimension cannon project analyzed the results and tried to locate the next likely place to find him.

No matter how difficult it sounded on the surface to find the TARDIS in an entirely different universe, it was actually harder. Much harder. Over the months they had spent searching for him, they had found that the Doctor had landed on Earth countless times between 2007 and 2010, sometimes being in multiple places at the same time. If they weren't careful, they risked finding the Doctor in an earlier incarnation or, worse yet, possibly even when he was traveling with Rose prior to her being trapped in Pete's World. The risk of a paradox was too great to allow that to happen.

Meanwhile, the cracks between realities became worse and worse, and the urgency to find him grew.

Early one morning about a week after she had been to Venice, Rose began to prepare for her next jump.

Jake and Mickey were sitting at the computer monitors at the far end of the room, and Jackie and Pete were again behind the glass in the observation room.

"We've got a good fix. We're going to try to put you down in the center of London, but there's a small distortion between there and here," Jake told her. "We'll have to adjust your trajectory to avoid it. It could throw you off a little; it could throw you off a lot. We just can't tell how much. Still want to go ahead?"

"Oh, yeah," Rose said, nodding. She tried to contain her excitement, but it wasn't easy. "I've got a really good feeling about it this time. This might be it."

She turned to get into the booth, and Mickey stopped her.

"Rose, I'm going with you."

She turned back and stared at him. "What?"

"I'm going, too," he told her. "Now that there are so many cracks, the old dimension hoppers have begun workin' again, and I'm thinkin' you could use my help. Him too. After all, I've saved his arse more than once myself." He gave her a wry grin, one she returned.

"Yes, you have," she agreed. "But are you sure about this?"

"Yeah. After all, with what's goin' on, it's no safer stayin' here," he said. "And actually… I've been thinkin' about it for a while now." He shrugged. "'S just, this could be my last chance to go back. My gran's gone, and with you gone too there won't be anything to keep me here."

Wordlessly, she pulled him into a tight hug. After a moment, she backed away enough to kiss him on the cheek.

"Good luck, Mickey," she whispered.

"You too," he said. Then he pulled away and winked at her. "Catch you on the flip side."

~oOo~

"Well, I don't know where I am," Rose said under her breath, "but I'm sure it's not London."

She was on the edge of a green in the center of what looked to be a small town. From where she stood she could see a number of well-kept homes each with neat little gardens, and an old fashioned pub and a fairly modern post office housed in the same historic building. A rock wall with climbing roses growing on it separated the green from a nearby wood, and the spire of an old stone church stood tall in the distance. And at the far end of the green, there was the bright red of a public phone box. When she saw it, she grinned.

"Maybe not London, but probably still England," she said.

The town was filled with a festive atmosphere. On the green were adults chatting in small groups and children of various ages playing games with several dogs chasing them as they ran back and forth. More children surrounded an ice cream van that was parked nearby, and the sounds of _Clare de Lune_ filtered through the air.

Standing near a tiny cement pond on the edge of the green, ramrod straight with arms crossed, was a man dressed in blue scrubs watching the revelry. Unlike the others, his body language screamed unhappiness and frustration.

"What's going on?" she asked, coming up behind him.

"Are you serious?" he asked. As he spoke he turned to face her, and she stared at him in amazement.

He stared back, a look of puzzlement on his face. "Don't I know you?" he asked.

"Rory Williams?" she asked at the same time.

"How do you know my name?" he answered.

Oops, she thought, and debated how to answer him. The last time she had seen him was only a week earlier, and since he obviously didn't remember the encounter, it might have been a lot longer for him. Long enough that he had forgotten her. Inwardly she kicked herself. If she had been using her head, she wouldn't have said his name already. In fact, she probably shouldn't have even approached him. Trying to maintain timelines was a bitch sometimes, and although she had gotten better at it over the years, she still occasionally struggled with it.

On the other hand, if Rory was the Doctor's companion that meant the Doctor was here somewhere.

"So what's going on?" she asked again, deciding just to ignore his question.

"You really don't know, do you?" He shook his head in disbelief. "Today's been kind of an odd day, particularly for me. I may have lost my job, I had a row with my girlfriend because her imaginary friend from childhood turned out to be real and I never believed her, and, oh yeah, the planet was almost destroyed by aliens. Nothing ever happens in this town so once the aliens left _they_ decided to have a party." He jerked his head at the green.

An awful suspicion came over Rose. She pulled her scanner out her pocket and tried to scan him without him seeing, but it didn't work.

"Who are you?" he said. "Why do I feel like I know you? And what is that?"

"Have you ever been to Venice?" she asked, avoiding his questions for the moment.

"No," he said, staring at the small device in her hand. It was making a slight hum barely audible over the surrounding noises. "I've never even been to Italy. Farthest I've ever been is a school trip to Paris. What_ is_ that thing?"

Rose examined the display. There were no time traces surrounding him. Absolutely none at all. Damn. That meant that in Rory's timeline it was before he had ever traveled in time. She rubbed her forehead in frustration and wondered if by showing up she had damaged the timeline and whether giving him more information would be more likely to heal the damage she could have done or just make it worse. She decided that if she was extremely careful with what she said, talking to him was the better course of action.

"It's a temporal scanner," she told him, shoving it back in a pocket. She walked to a nearby bench and sat down, and Rory followed and sat down next to her.

"A _what_?"

"A temporal scanner. It primarily scans for evidence of time travel, but it also has settings to look for alien life forms and alien technology."

"Time travel?" He gaped at her for a moment, and then shook his head. "If you had said that to me yesterday, I would have thought you were barmy, but after today I could believe almost anything. My girlfriend's imaginary friend from childhood, the Raggedy Doctor, turns out to be real, shows up after being gone for twelve years and singlehandedly saves the planet from aliens who were planning on blowing it up. Oh, yeah, I'm ready to believe anything."

"Did you say the Doctor?" she asked, and he stared at her again.

"I tell you that the planet was almost destroyed, and that's what you ask about?"

"It's really, really important," she told him. "Your girlfriend's imaginary friend was called the Doctor? And he turned out to be real and saved the planet?"

He nodded. "Yeah."

"What did he look like?"

"I don't know," he answered. "Tall, medium brown hair…"

She bit her lip in nervousness and pulled out her mobile. She flipped through the pictures stored on it and found one she had taken at the 2012 Olympics.

"Is that him?" she asked.

Rory shook his head. "No. But that's what he was wearing when he got here. Looks like the same suit at any rate."

Rose's heart sank. If he had been wearing his pinstriped suit but still looked different, that meant he was a future incarnation of the Doctor she knew, not a past one. She tried not to think about what could have caused him to regenerate.

He furrowed his brow as a long forgotten memory tried to emerge. He lost it when she spoke again.

"Why did your girlfriend call her imaginary friend the Raggedy Doctor?"

"Because when she met him his clothes were all torn up," he answered absently. "Can I see that picture again?"

Rose handed him her phone and he stared at the picture in it, a look of intense concentration on his face.

"I recognize him for some reason. Why is that?" All of a sudden his face cleared. "I know! Ynys Du. There were reports of monsters there, and he sorted it. Along with a blonde girl…" He turned and gaped at her. "That was you, wasn't it? But that was ages ago!"

"You were at Ynys Du?"

"Yeah, staying with relatives. I must have been, I don't know, eleven or twelve at the time? And you both were there. Who is he?"

"That's the Doctor," she told him.

"No," he said. "I met the Doctor, and he doesn't look anything like that."

Rose hesitated for a moment, trying to decide what to tell him, and then took a deep breath before she answered. "Yes, actually it is him. The Doctor is an alien. When he's about to die, he can do this thing to save his life where his whole body changes, looks and everything. It's called regeneration. In fact, he didn't look like that when I met him. When I first met him, he had really short hair and blue eyes and kind of a prominent nose and ears. And he always wore jumpers and jeans with a leather jacket."

He gaped at her as another memory unexpectedly surfaced. "Were you ever at Southam Hospital in Bromley with him?"

She scanned her memories of her time with her first Doctor and then slowly nodded. "We went to a hospital once. It might have been in Bromley. I never knew the name of it."

"Oh, my God. I saw you there with him as well. I was doing an internship there and the two of you came in and kidnapped a patient."

"Rescued a patient, more like," she said, and began to laugh. "A friend of ours created a diversion outside while we snuck in. He ran naked across the green and the car park. Was a big hit, according to him at least."

"He was," Rory told her, grinning at the memory. "The other nurses, the female ones mostly but there were a few men too, were talking about it for weeks."

"Jack has that effect on people," she said.

"I have a question. Amy met him twelve years ago, and he looked exactly the same as he does now, but when I saw the two of you when I was a kid, he looked like that," he pointed at the picture still being displayed on the mobile, "and when I saw you at the hospital, he looked like you described him in the leather jacket. How is that possible?"

"The Doctor has a time machine. He calls it the TARDIS. It stands for Time and Relative Dimensions in Space. It looks a bit like that phone box over there, but it's blue and says Police Call Box on the top. On the outside it doesn't look very big, but on the inside it's huge. Absolutely enormous. I never saw all of it, in fact I doubt the Doctor has either. It's dimensionally transcendental, which means the outside and the inside are basically in different dimensions but from a practical standpoint just means it's bigger on the inside than the outside. Anyway, when you saw us, it was out of order. Straight line for you, kind of a curvy line for me an' him."

Rory nodded slowly and stared in front of him at nothing, taking it all in. He didn't even seem to notice when she took back her mobile and shoved it back in her pocket. She knew that between the aliens and the time travel, it was a lot to take in and she wouldn't be surprised if he was experiencing a bit of culture shock.

"Rory," she continued, and after a moment he turned back to her. "Where is he? Where's the Doctor?"

"The Doctor?" Rory shook his head. "He left. A couple of hours ago."

Rose put her elbows on her knees and dropped her head into her hands. So close, but she had missed him. Again. Once she had composed herself somewhat, she stood.

"I've got to go," she told him.

"Wait," Rory said. "Please. One last question. Who are you? What's your name?"

"I'm sorry," she said. "But I can't tell you that. The wrong word at the wrong time and place could have catastrophic results, could even change an entire causal nexus. I probably told you too much as it is. I'm out of my proper timeline and need to try and get back to it. I've got to try and find the Doctor again, the one before the one you know. So Rory, when you see the Doctor again, you can't tell him you saw me. You can't tell _anyone_ you've seen me."

And then she pressed the retrieval button on her wrist and disappeared.


	6. Chapter 6--Pete's World

**a/n: A big thank you to scifigeekgirl (Kelkat9 on tumblr and Teaspoon) for all her help with this chapter. If you haven't read her stuff, you should!**

* * *

**Chapter Six—Pete's World **

In less than the blink of an eye, Rose found herself back in the dimension cannon room. The first thing she noticed was how dark it was. Except for the emergency exit signs and the slight glow overhead and underneath her feet of the cannon powering down, there was no light at all.

And it was completely empty.

Unlike the room usually was, full of bright, flashing lights and people bustling in and out, it was dark and deserted. Since the dimension project had begun, it had almost never looked like this, and never during one of her jumps.

"Where is everyone?" she asked aloud.

She stepped out of the booth and turned on the overhead lights and computer monitors. As she was about to head out of the room to look for someone to tell her what was going on, the door flew open.

"Oh, thank God," Mickey said. With Jake on his heels, he crossed over to her and immediately wrapped her in a huge hug. She automatically returned it. When Mickey let go of her, Jake took his place.

"What's going on?" she asked. "What happened? I didn't expect to see you here, Mick."

"You've been missing for two days, Rose," Jake said, and she pulled away to stare at him in shock. He let go of her and addressed Mickey. "I'm gonna go phone her parents."

Jake went into the hall, as much to give them privacy as to ring Pete and Jackie, and Mickey sat down on one of the chairs in front of the computer monitors. Rose sat next to him.

"Babe, I left here right after you and arrived in London smack dab in the middle of a Dalek invasion. First thing I did was use the temporal scanner to look for any trace of you or the dimension cannon, but I couldn't find you. Anywhere. Right after that I got transported to the Daleks' ship. The Doctor was there, along with Jack and Sarah Jane and a woman named Martha he used to travel with. There was also this… thing there. The Daleks' creator. The Doctor called him Davros. Looked like he had been a person once but wasn't one anymore. Somehow he and the Daleks had gotten out of the Time Lock and were planning on destroying all of reality. That's what was making the stars go out and creating the first set of cracks between the universes.

"Davros started taunting the Doctor about ruining the rest of us, of using us to do his dirty work. When he heard me tell the Doctor that I didn't know where you were, Davros told him that you had been traveling across the Void to get back to him, that it had been prophesied that you would be there as well and that since you weren't there you must have been lost in the Void. Then he told the Doctor that that was his fault too.

"Well, that was the last straw. The Doctor got real quiet. Cold. I've never seen him like that. He was seriously scary, scarier than the Daleks even. He somehow got loose, managed to send the Daleks back into the Time War and Time Lock it again. Then he took everyone home. I told him I needed to come back here to see if you had managed to get back, so he boosted the signal on my dimension hopper. Right before I jumped, he took off."

"All by himself?" Rose asked quietly.

"Yeah," he answered and then paused for a moment, as if he wasn't sure if he should say more. She stared at him, brow furrowed, silently urging him to continue. Finally he said, "Rose, when the Doctor saw me, first thing out of his mouth was 'Where's Rose?' and I had to tell him that you had jumped at the same time as me but that I had no idea where you ended up. When he realized you were missing he looked heartbroken, absolutely crushed."

Rose drew in a ragged breath and turned away, overcome with heartache for him. After a moment she turned back and met Mickey's eyes. "Mick, he shouldn't be alone. I've got to go back."

"You can't!" Jackie interjected from the doorway. Rose turned to see her mother rush into the room with Pete and Jake following. "You just got home."

"And I don't know if you can get back, Rose," Jake said. He sat down beside her and pulled up a map of the cracks in the universe on the monitor in front of him. Fine blue lines covered the black background with a smaller number of red lines crisscrossing them. "This is the way the cracks between the universes looked before your last jump. Now the original ones are in blue and the new ones, the distortions we were trying to avoid, are in red." He clicked on an icon in the corner and a new screen came up. "This is what it looks like now." On the screen most of the blue lines disappeared as well as a number of the red ones. "Both sets are closing really fast, and the only cracks left are the ones right on top of the distortions."

"Now when you were missing," Mickey added, "we analyzed your trajectories to see why you were getting off course, and it looks like for some reason the dimension cannon was actually attracted to the distortions, like something was pulling you towards them. We think that since we were aiming you at the TARDIS, we were actually aiming you at the distortions somehow. And when you didn't come back, we thought you fell into one. If we try to send you again, you'll have to be right on top of one, and I don't know if you can avoid being pulled in. Not only that, there's no guarantee you'll find him even if you do make it."

"And the cracks are closing so fast that it may be a one way trip," Jake said. "The longer you're there, the less likely there'll be enough cracks left to get you back. You'll have five, ten minutes tops before it'll be impossible to return."

"I don't care what the risk is, I've got to try," Rose said firmly.

"Well, if you're goin', I'm goin' with you," Mickey told her. "But this time I'll link the dimension hopper to the cannon. That way even if we get separated, we'll still be in about the same time and in the same general area."

Rose nodded. "Okay, that makes sense."

"Oh, Rose, you can't go," Jackie pleaded tearfully.

"Mum, you always knew I was planning on staying with him when I found him again," Rose reminded her. "You've got Dad and Tony, but he doesn't have anyone. And I promised I'd always be there for him. I have to at least try."

Pursing her lips, Jackie looked away and didn't answer.

With Rose and Pete's help, Mickey and Jake got to work trying to get a fix on the current location of the TARDIS and searching for a new trajectory across the Void that that put as much space between Rose and the distortions as possible. Within minutes, they had the new coordinates programmed.

While the men said their goodbyes they moved to the other side of the room to give the women some privacy.

"I love you," Rose said as she wrapped her arms around her mother.

"I love you too, sweetheart." Jackie sniffed loudly. "And you tell that bloody alien that Void or no Void, if he hurts you I'm gonna find him and give him the slap of his life."

Rose quietly laughed. "I'll be sure to tell him."

"Rose, it's time to go," Mickey said, and the two women nodded.

"I'll miss you, Mum," Rose whispered. She hugged her mother tightly one more time and didn't allow herself to think about the fact that it was the last time.

She hugged Jake and Pete and then crossed to the dimension cannon. Once inside, Mickey stood next to her, just outside the booth.

Rose looked around the room. This was it. The last time she'd be making a jump. The last time she'd ever be in Pete's World.

The last time she'd ever see her mother again.

She swallowed down the lump that had formed in her throat and wiped her eyes which had filled with unshed tears.

"Okay, three, two, one," Jake said.

"I love you, Mum," she whispered.

Jake pressed the button to send Rose across the Void. At the same time, Mickey pressed the dimension hopper he wore around his neck. And as they disappeared, Jackie buried her face in Pete's shoulder, and she began to cry.


	7. Chapter 7--Leadworth, 2010

**Chapter Seven-Leadworth, 2010**

As she materialized on Earth, Rose gasped. The trip across the Void from the parallel Pete's World had been rougher than usual and rather than just feeling a tingling in her skin, it felt like it was on fire. She took a deep breath and blew it out slowly, and gradually the pain faded.

Rose glanced at her watch. Damn. With the time of the translation and recovery from the trip, she had perhaps eight minutes before the cracks closed and she'd no longer be able to get back.

With the time of the translation and recovery from the trip, she had perhaps eight minutes before the cracks closed and she'd no longer be able to get back.

As the burning sensation subsided, her Torchwood training kicked in and she quickly began to survey her surroundings. She normally materialized outside, in the street or an alley or a park or something, but this time she was in a building. More specifically a nondescript hallway with a white ceiling made of acoustical tiles, walls painted dove grey, and a floor covered with an industrial carpeting in a darker shade of grey. Behind her was the entrance to the building, wide double doors of tempered glass flanked by windows on either side, while in front of her were more doors. One set was clearly marked as the mens and ladies' toilets, while others led who knew where. And coming from somewhere ahead of her were the sounds of people talking, muffled as if it was originating from behind one of the doors.

Overly conscious of the time, she knew she didn't have time to investigate everything. She had to prioritize, and that meant finding out where she was.

~oOo~

As Mickey arrived back on Earth, he shook his head and laughed when he saw where he was. "Of all the places to land."

He stood in the center of Roald Dahl Plass in Cardiff, Wales. Behind him lay the fountain and the Millennium Center, and in front of him was a clear view of the bay.

Pulling his temporal scanner out of his pocket, he scanned the surrounding area and shook his head again. Under his feet lay one of the largest caches of alien tech he had ever seen, and in front of the fountain was a lift hidden by a perception filter.

He crossed over to stand on the lift, and as it began to lower, his face twisted into a small grin. "Oi, Jumpin' Jack Flash," he yelled, "comin' down!"

~oOo~

Feeling the seconds tick away, she hurriedly left the building, to twilight and warm summer air. She stepped off a wide, cement stoop onto a stretch of pavement separating the building from a small green. A wood lay beyond a chest-high stone fence which seemed to surround the property. To the far left was a small car park filled to capacity and beyond that was an old, stone church. Something about its spire looked vaguely familiar, but she wasn't looking for a church. She was looking for Mickey, or a familiar blue box, neither of which she could see.

Probably not London. No sign of Mickey. No sign of the Doctor or the TARDIS. No clear way to find out where and when she was, or even what universe she was in.

And she now had six minutes in which to decide whether to stay or return to Pete's World.

Well, there was no way to find out where she was from a car park, not in six minutes at any rate. She knew there were people inside so she reentered the building, hearing again muffled talking and laughter. The sounds quickly turned into music, and she made her way forward to investigate. She rounded a corner at the end of the hall and found a set of wooden doors with glass insets at eye level. Outside the door was a placard that stated "Pond-Williams Wedding" and opposite it were a number of simple, armless chairs.

Five minutes.

She groaned, debating whether to burst in on a private party, and a wedding reception at that, just to find out where she was, when the doors opened and a man walked out wearing a grey tuxedo with a top hat and tails.

They gaped at each other.

"It's you!" he said.

"Rory?" Rose looked at the placard and back at him. "Rory Williams?" She gestured at the sign. "As in the 'Pond-Williams' wedding?"

He threw out his hands. "That's me," he said. "The groom."

Rose was stunned for a moment. "Is he…" she began, and then stopped herself. She shook her head, indicating to Rory that she didn't want him to answer. If the Doctor was here, with Rory, it was the new him, not the one she knew. She hadn't been sure about how he had felt about her before, after all he had never finished that sentence in Norway, and even if he had cared for her then, it didn't mean he did now.

And if he didn't, she didn't know if she could bear it.

Four minutes.

"Who are you?" Rory asked. "And if you don't mind me asking, why do you wear the same thing all the time?"

She laughed, the absurdity of the moment overcoming her nervousness. "To maintain timelines," she said. "But I don't suppose it matters anymore. In a little less than four minutes I won't even have the ability to damage timelines. My name's Rose. Rose Tyler." She held out her hand, and he shook it.

"And you've been looking for the Doctor, your Doctor," Rory stated. She nodded. "Did you ever find him?"

She swallowed hard. Three minutes. "No," she said. "Never did." She sank down on one of the chairs, and he sat down next to her.

"Can you tell me, were you two…" Rose looked over at Rory, startled. "I'm sorry," he continued apologetically. "Absolutely none of my business. It's just, I feel like I've known you my whole life, but I haven't, have I?"

"No, 's alright," Rose told him. "I don't mind. Sort of? Maybe? Sounds weird, I know, but I'm not really sure how he felt. And now, since he's changed…"

Rory flashed back in his mind to her the first times he had seen her, and the tall, blue eyed man in the leather jacket whom he now knew had been the Doctor, and the dark haired, dark eyed man in pinstripes who had been the Doctor as well. And all of a sudden he remembered how despite how different the Doctor had looked back then, he had had an adoring look for the woman next to him. And maybe it was because he just wanted the Doctor to be happy, maybe it was because he wanted to see Rose smile again, or maybe it was because it was his own wedding day, he began to grin and took her hand.

"Rose," he said, "I've got to tell you something…"

~oOo~

Amy looked around the room as she allowed Brian, her new father-in-law, to pull her into his arms for a dance. On the other side of the dance floor her mother waited to share the same dance with Rory.

"What's wrong?" Brian asked.

"Nothing, nothing," she answered in an overly cheerful voice that indicated anything but. As she and Brian danced, Amy continued scan the room. "I'm just looking for your son. My new husband." Out of the corner of her eye she saw the Doctor come to the rescue, grandly offering to take Rory's place. She would have laughed at her mother's expression, which indicated more than a little trepidation, if she weren't so upset. "Who is supposed to be here dancing with my mother right now."

Brian began to look around as well, muttering something under his breath. Although Amy couldn't quite make out what he had said, she assumed it was a criticism of his son. Amy would have normally defended Rory, but she certainly wasn't going to do it right now, not when she was so angry at him for missing the dance.

And then grew angrier still. Through the glass in the double doors leading into the hall, she spotted him sitting in the corridor with a pretty, blonde woman. _Holding hands_ with a pretty, blonde woman.

"Excuse me," Amy said and pulled out of Brian's arms without waiting for a response and stalked across the room.

As she burst into the corridor, the doors swung all the way open and then by sheer momentum bounced back, neatly closing behind her. Rory snatched his hand out of Rose's and jumped to his feet.

"Amy!" he said, wide eyed. "This…" he waved a hand between himself and Rose, "this isn't what it looks like."

"I am glad it isn't," she said coldly, "because what it looks like is a prospective murder scene. Right now you are supposed to be in there," she jerked her thumb over one shoulder towards the doors behind her, "dancing with my mother. And instead I find you out here, holding hands with…" Amy looked over at the blonde woman, who met her gaze. The woman had schooled her features into an expressionless mask, but Amy could see the tracks of tears recently shed. Puzzled, she looked at her new husband and then back at the young woman in front of her.

"Amy, if I could just explain," Rory began, surprised when Amy didn't interrupt him. "This is Rose, a friend of the Doctor's." He glanced down at her, but she didn't return his gaze. Instead, she looked directly ahead of her. "A very good friend, if I'm not mistaken." His eyes met Amy's. "A very, _very_ good friend," he said meaningfully, "one who hasn't seen him in a very long time."

Amy gaped at him. "Seriously? Did you tell her he's here?"

"I hadn't gotten that far," Rory answered. "I was just about to tell her that when you interrupted us."

"He's here?" Rose said at the same time. She jumped to her feet and wiped her face with her hands.

"Yeah. Dancing with my mother. Which, I might remind you, you were supposed to be doing." That last part was directed at Rory. "I'll just go get him."

"No!" Rory almost shouted. "Let me. _Please_ let me. You stay here with Rose."

"Alright," Amy said slowly. She adjusted the long skirt of her wedding dress and sat down, and then patted the seat next to her. With a deep breath to quell her nervousness, Rose sat down beside her, and after Rory pushed open the door and reentered the hall, the door swung back but didn't quite close all the way.

It took Rory several minutes to get the Doctor off the dance floor. To the consternation of his father, and the great amusement of everyone else, the Doctor was now dancing with Brian, thankfully at arm's length, twirling him around the room not quite in time to the music. Rory just stood and watched for a moment, hoping the scene was being caught on video by someone in the room.

When the music ended, he quickly crossed the room and grabbed the Doctor by the arm before he could begin to dance with someone else.

"Did you want the next dance, Rory?" the Doctor asked in surprise. "Because I assumed you'd want to dance with your wife. Or your mother-in-law. Who seemed to be a bit put out when you weren't there to dance with her at the proper time. Luckily for you, I stepped in and took your place."

Rory rolled his eyes and pulled him from the dance floor. "No, I don't want to dance with you. There's someone I want you to meet."

"If it's that great-aunt of yours, we've already met, thank you very much, and I'm certain she doesn't want to dance with me again. And the fire was absolutely not my fault, no matter what she says."

Rory made a note to himself to ask Amy about that later. "No, it's not Aunt Ethyl. It's a friend of mine," he said and the Doctor gave him a puzzled look. Rory grinned. This was the first time in his life that he felt he had the upper hand with the Doctor, and boy, did that feel good. "C'mon, she's out here."

"She?"

Rory's grin widened. God, it felt good.

He led the way to the hall door, and the Doctor peeked out of the window… and stopped. He didn't just cease moving forward; he froze, mouth agape and wide eyes staring fixedly at Rose. It was more than surprise, more than shock. The Doctor didn't even appear to be breathing.

Oh, this didn't just feel good, it felt incredible.

Rose's voice filtered through the double doors.

"And so we were trying to trace him through her, and all of a sudden she just sort of… disappeared. We couldn't figure it out. So we had to start tracing him individually, just using the time traces of the TARDIS which was much harder."

"And you never did find out what happened to Donna?" Amy asked.

Suddenly the Doctor came back to himself. He burst through the doors, making a typically grand entrance, and Rory followed, dodging the doors so they wouldn't hit him.

"Donna got married," the Doctor said, walking in. He stopped before he had made it halfway across the hall. "Met him while trapped in the mainframe of the largest library in the universe. At first we thought she had imagined him, but then when we realized he was real we went back for him. Lee. Nice man, has a bit of a stutter but the marriage is still legal. They're living in Ealing now, not far from Sarah Jane actually. Last time I saw them they had two children, a boy and a girl."

As he had been speaking, Rose had risen slowly to her feet. The Doctor's voice trailed off, and the only sounds were those of the wedding reception, muffled by the doors behind him. Amy and Rory exchanged concerned glances as the Doctor and Rose stood there staring at one another without moving.

After several long moments, the Doctor broke the silence.

"Rose Tyler," he said, his voice full of repressed emotion. "I thought you were dead."

"Doctor?" she asked tentatively. She stared at his new looks: his floppy, brown hair; his young-old face with its prominent jaw and forehead; and his green eyes, eyes that seemed to have the knowledge of the universe behind them. "Is it really you?"

"Yes," he answered. "Still me. New face—well, not all that new anymore—new hair." He looked up at a lock of his fringe that had fallen down into his face. "I don't always wear a tuxedo, that's just for the wedding, but I do wear a bowtie now—bowties are cool—and hats." He whipped the top hat off his head and almost dropped it. He fumbled with the brim a bit before handing it to Rory. "Hats are cool too. But even though the outer packaging is different, it's still me." He began to move and was instantly at her side, laying a hand on her shoulder. He trailed it down, finally taking her hand in his. "I'd tell you the first thing I ever said to you was run, but what I really want to do is finish the sentence I started on the beach in Norway." He glanced out of the corner of his eye at Rory and Amy, who were staring at them with undisguised interest, and bent down to whisper in her ear. When he pulled backwards, he met her eyes and she let out a quiet sob.

"Do you still…" he asked, and she nodded vigorously. "Even though I changed?" She nodded again, and then almost faster than the eye could see he had cupped her face and was kissing her. After an almost imperceptible hesitation she had wrapped her arms around his neck and was kissing him back.

Rory tried to pull Amy back into the reception, but she wouldn't move, continuing to stare at them wide eyed. She had a small smile on her face, one that grew as the Doctor deepened the kiss.

Mindful of Rose's need for air, the Doctor eventually pulled back from her and rested his forehead on hers. "Evidently kissing is something I now do as well," he told her quietly, and his voice held a touch of amusement.

"Good," Rose told him, "because I plan on doing a lot of it from here on out." She pulled him in for another snog, this time clearly more passionate than the last.

"Amy," Rory hissed, tugging harder on her arm. "Let's give them a little privacy, shall we?"

"No way," she stage-whispered back.

The Doctor pulled away from Rose again. He spoke without tearing his eyes away from hers.

"Amelia Pond, do I interrupt you when you are snogging Rory?"

"Usually."

"Then do I stare at you when you are snogging him?"

"Sometimes," she answered.

"Well, this is different, and you will do me the courtesy of shoving off."

"Alright, but don't do anything I wouldn't do," Amy said cheekily. "Particularly here. After all this building is owned by the Church."

Rory snorted, and Rose grinned. The Doctor shot Amy a glance before returning his attention to Rose.

And as Amy watched her best friend begin to snog Rose again, she allowed her new husband to pull her backwards into the reception hall.

Later, much later, after most of the wedding guests had left and Amy and Rory sat at the head table drinking champagne, the Doctor entered the hall with Rose. Amy smiled as she saw they were holding hands. They were awfully cute together.

"Mr. and Mrs. Pond," the Doctor began.

"It doesn't really work that way," Rory interjected, and the Doctor ignored him.

"Amy and Rory Pond," the Doctor continued, "I'd like to take you on a honeymoon trip, anywhere, any when in the universe."

Rory snorted and whispered something under his breath which sounded a lot like _no way in hell_.

"Fat chance, Raggedy Man," Amy told him. "You think I want to go on my honeymoon just to watch you play kissy-face with your girlfriend?"

"Told you she wouldn't go for it," Rose told him. "You owe me ten quid, and don't think I won't make you pay up."

He shot her a look, and she grinned cheekily at him.

"Tell you what," Amy said. "We'll go on our honeymoon, and when you and Rose are done getting _reacquainted_," she put her hands up and made a gesture of air quotes, "you can come back and pick us up. But it better not be after fourteen years this time." She shook her finger at him, and he grinned.

"Deal," he agreed. Then he turned to Rory. "And Rory Pond, you've been holding out on me. Why didn't you tell me you knew Rose? How long have you known each other?"

Rose and Rory exchanged glances and grinned.

"I didn't tell you because I couldn't," he answered, "but as far as how long I've known her, I've known her almost my whole life."


End file.
